


Psychoactive

by ExtraPenguin



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Drunkenness, M/M, Pre-Slash, Thrawn gets high off something innocuous to humans, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26695606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/pseuds/ExtraPenguin
Summary: Eli and Thrawn enjoy some Lhuroxian ale in the ship's bar. Unfortunately, the acceptance report made no note about the fact that it was psychoactive for Chiss.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 26
Kudos: 111





	Psychoactive

Eli Vanto sniffed the alcohol dubiously before mentally shrugging and deciding that, as a Lieutenant Commander, he'd survive any potential embarrassment of ending up in the medbay and sipped the Lhuroxian ale. The pale green drink burned as it went down his esophagus. It tasted surprisingly unherbal, considering the color.

Next to him, Admiral Thrawn was still eyeing his glass. "Are drinks of such color common on larger warships?"

"This particular one is so rare as to be unheard-of, sir, but it's in the ship's bar, so it must've been cleared for human consumption." He decided against speculating on Chiss consumption, as Thrawn would just reply that Chiss physiology was superior to human in that respect. "Other than that, well, it's not a terribly appetizing color for humans, yet not odd enough to be an attraction in and of itself, so there aren't many of them, I imagine."

Thrawn nodded, staring at his full glass. "Chiss physiology is, of course, eminently superior to human on the matter of ethanol consumption," he remarked, before gulping down a larger mouthful than Eli. He hummed thoughtfully as he set the glass down. "Interesting."

Eli resisted the urge to sigh and asked, "The taste, sir?"

"Indeed," Thrawn replied. He drank another mouthful. "How would you describe it, Commander?"

It shouldn't surprise Eli that it would be one of those days: Thrawn had never come across anything he didn't want to learn more about. Today's topic seemed to be the human palate — he'd probably tasted something unusual with his no doubt superior tastebuds and wanted to hear how humans found it.

If nothing else, it was a break from the art discussions. Eli did genuinely enjoy listening to Thrawn monologue about art, all the little signs of enthusiasm on his voice and face that he'd learned to find. And other topics as well, of course; Thrawn had a very nice voice-

Right. The ale.

Eli lifted his glass to his lips, eyes studiously averted from his commanding officer, who was gazing at him with an intent usually reserved for works of art. He forced himself to concentrate solely on the ale.

"It's a bit stronger than something called an ale should be, so the first thing I notice is the bite," Eli said. "After that, it's — based on the color, one would expect a herbal taste, but mostly it's smooth and a touch earthy. The aftertaste is a bit sweet. It smells unappealing, but while all the smells are present in the taste, the tastes not present in the smell balance it out into a cohesive whole."

"Very good, Commander," Thrawn said, looking and sounding as pleased as he possibly could.

"Do you enjoy the taste, sir?" Eli asked, trying to suppress how the praise made him feel. This was yet another lesson on observation, probably, and would thus continue for a few more rounds.

"It is pleasing," Thrawn said. He took another sip. His brows knit. "There is a taste I have yet to observe in other human beverages."

"The brewers are non-human," Eli said. "Most Lhuroxian items cause no harm to humans, but taste dreadful. It's possible it hits your palate differently to mine."

Thrawn hummed and drank some more. Eli hurried to catch up — the CO should finish first and be the one to decide about subsequent rounds, but it wouldn't do to make him wait around with an empty glass. Not that Thrawn cared, but they had appearances to maintain.

Figuring that Thrawn would want some examples of Lhuroxian art, Eli dug out his datapad. There wasn't much available; a short article by a collective cataloguing nonhuman art claimed it was because Lhuroxians saw all things as transient, their artworks included. Attached were a few still images and holos of the woven live reeds and leaf sculptures.

Eli keyed them up and pushed the datapad at Thrawn. "Lhuroxian art."

Thrawn immediately perked up. "Thank you, Commander."

There was something immensely appealing about watching someone concentrate on something they loved, Eli thought. As Thrawn flicked through the images, going back and forth through them all before settling his full attention on each in turn, he catalogued every minute motion of Thrawn's face. A considered stare at the general impression, then little twitches of the muscles surrounding the eye as Thrawn went over the images in detail. If Thrawn enjoyed looking at art, Eli enjoyed looking at Thrawn looking at art.

After several long minutes of silence punctuated only by Thrawn changing image or drinking, he said, "The Lhuxorians are quadripedal, though with the ability to rise on their hind legs so they can do their art with their forelegs. Their hands are less dextrous than a human's. Their society is not wholly primitive, but they have rather kept nature and its paths close to their technological villages. In size, they are at least as tall as and at most twice as tall as a human when standing upright, though given the lack of scale on the images, it is hard to tell." Thrawn smiled uncharacteristically widely. "Was I correct?"

"Uh, let me check, sir," Eli said and grabbed his datapad. Thrawn was slow to release it.

There wasn't much on the Lhuxorians on the HoloNet, but the brief datasheet confirmed all of Thrawn's conclusions, albeit not in any detail. Thrawn smiled very smugly.

Under the pretense of doing another search on the quadripeds, Eli looked up the acceptance report on the Lhuxorian ale. Fully nontoxic to humans and Twi'leks, and at least one Zabrak had gotten drunk on it to no ill effect. A Chiss was not a Twi'lek, of course, but-

Thrawn finished his glass. "Do they always do this with the lights, Commander?"

They weren't doing anything with the lights. "What thing, sir?" Maybe there was some sort of malfunction coming up, and Thrawn had noticed some prelude in the infrared.

"The ... pulsation," Thrawn said, face tilted up and expression enthralled. "Do give my compliments to whomever is responsible." He lifted his hand to his chin like he did when examining artworks.

Eli discreetly sniffed Thrawn's glass, then his own. No noticeable differences, though given Thrawn's different metabolism and how he'd consumed more of the ale than Eli had, it was plausible he'd be displaying effects first. The question was, was this intentional, and what was the aim?

"Sir, I think that's enough for the night," Eli said. "Sir?"

Thrawn was still gazing at the ceiling. "You may retire for the night," he airily said.

Eli walked up to his seated form and quietly asked, "Do you wish to go to the medbay or your quarters?"

That got Thrawn's attention. He whipped his head around, momentarily losing his balance in the process. "Why?"

"You're behaving uncharacteristically, sir," Eli said. His eyes skittered over the long line of Thrawn's throat, bared by the way he looked up at Eli's standing form, over Thrawn's parted lips, over Thrawn's wide-open glowing eyes, drinking in Eli alone, before deciding that the forehead was probably the safest place to fix his gaze. "Medbay or your quarters?"

"I trust you," Thrawn exhaled. "My quarters, then."

"Yes, sir." Eli, very cognizant of the fact that they were in public, did his level best to be discreet with the hand between Thrawn's shoulder blades, gently pushing him off the chair and along the corridor.

"The walls remind me of Ighirut Cenn's impressionistic period," Thrawn observed, still on his feet but body language subtly looser: if normally he was a block of doonium, this would be him starting to melt.

"How so, sir?" Eli asked, pushing him more. Not that far to Thrawn's quarters.

"They are... vibrating," Thrawn replied, then added a bunch of praise on the pulsating texture of pseudograys. It did not quite make sense to Eli, though whether it was due to his lack of education or Thrawn's inebriation, he couldn't say.

There weren't many people about at this time; Eli nonetheless led Thrawn through the less-traversed routes to his quarters. No-one came across them after the first turn, which Eli was grateful for after Thrawn started swaying.

"Sir, are you sure you don't want to go to the medbay?" Eli quietly asked.

Thrawn took another step as if floating. "There is nothing wrong with me, Commander," he said with an eerily serene expression. "The only thing wrong is your rank."

Eli felt his face twist. "My rank." Surely Thrawn didn't mean he should still be stuck as an Ensign? No, he probably just thought Eli had missed an opportunity to grow by skipping Lieutenant.

"You deserve a promotion," Thrawn calmly said. "As they don't hand those out in the medbay, there is no reason for you to go."

"A-" Eli realized he'd frozen. "A promotion? Another one?"

"My allies could only do so much, unfortunately," Thrawn said, as if skipping several ranks and going straight from Ensign to Lieutenant Commander were commonplace.

"No, it's- I'm good, sir, truly," Eli reassured and told himself it was just the alcohol.

"You're very good," Thrawn agreed with a softer smile than Eli remembered seeing on him. "Remember that."

Eli had no idea what to say to that. Thankfully, they were close enough to Thrawn's quarters that he didn't need to say anything.

The stormtrooper guard saluted. "At ease," Thrawn said, by now loose-limbed enough even the stormtroopers could notice.

"Sir?" one of the stormtroopers asked.

Eli shook his head as Thrawn pressed his hand to the palm lock with less grace than usual. The stormtroopers let out little ahhs of understanding and resumed staring forward, no doubt with amused expressions under their helmets. Thrawn getting drunk — or even tipsy — was unheard of yet expected behavior for senior officers, and thus an amusing event for them.

"Have the lights been adjusted since I last was here?" Thrawn asked after the door hissed closed behind them.

"No, sir." Eli considered the symptoms of inebriation. "Too bright?"

"Yes," Thrawn said with some relief.

"Lights to twenty percent," Eli said after Thrawn made no motions to do anything about it.

The overhead lights dimmed to a level where Eli could still clearly see, but the glow of Thrawn's red eyes was noticeable. Thrawn sighed and his eyes fluttered closed.

Eli took out his datapad and looked at the ale's acceptance report again. Thrawn didn't drink often, but when he did, his tolerance for alcohol was good enough that he should be nowhere near this drunk. He'd drunk more ethanol and been fine on many occasions. That meant-

_"There is a taste I have yet to observe in other human beverages."_

Of course. Thrawn wasn't human, or a Twi'lek, or a Zabrak. It would be surprising if there weren't any chemicals that were psychoactive for him but not Eli.

If it was a psychoactive chemical, then... Treatment depended. One dose wouldn't cause an addiction, probably, but might give Thrawn a terrible hangover. He wouldn't be fully himself this evening, so Eli should make sure he didn't wander around spooking people.

"You are thinking," Thrawn said, using the Sy Bisti word for thinking. "What of?"

"I suspect one of the ingredients of the ale is psychoactive in Chiss but not humans," Eli said in Sy Bisti. "Do you recognize the symptoms?"

Thrawn stared at him, swaying ever so slightly on his feet. "Psychoactive?" he asked.

So even his Sy Bisti vocabulary had its limits. Kriff. "Drugs," Eli tried to explain. "Like alcohol, or, or spice. Things that make your mind different for a while."

"Come," Thrawn said and led Eli from his Admiral's office to the small bedroom.

Every wall was covered with art. If the holos in his office were art work, these were art leisure: Eli recognized a number which Thrawn had picked up on the side of missions to get art relevant to his job, or which he'd acquired under the auspices of an extremely tenuous connection to whatever he was supposed to be doing.

"You know this, yes?" Thrawn asked while pointing to a painting Eli recognized getting with Thrawn during a particularly eventful shore leave a few years back. "Is it as it pastly was?"

"It looks the same to me, sir," Eli replied after a moment's observation of the shiny variegated blues. It still looked like light filtering through abstracted ice. Thrawn had been extremely taken with it the moment he set his eyes on it.

"Ah." Thrawn considered the painting. "Perhaps I should sleep over this ocular tlia'csukthen."

For a moment, Eli thought of dragging him to the medbay against his will if need be, but if he was already slipping out of Sy Bisti into what must be his native tongue, there was no chance he'd be able to comfortably communicate in Basic — and that was all anyone on the ship spoke, save Thrawn himself and Eli. "Can you change into your sleepwear unaided?" he asked instead.

Thrawn frowned consideringly and rocked on his feet as if to test something. He overbalanced and would have fallen on the ground had Eli not caught him.

"It seems I can't," Thrawn very calmly said from where he was practically swooned in Eli's arms.

His glowing eyes gently lit his face. It was like staring into the heart of a star, ruby red like a summer night's sunset. Thrawn's expression was soft as well, made more so by the light-

"You're heavy," Eli complained as he shoved Thrawn to his feet.

"The joys of exercise," Thrawn said as Eli carefully walked him to the bed and sat him down on it. "Or perhaps a bone density," he started in Sy Bisti before continuing in a language Eli didn't recognize.

It sounded nice, though. Eli wouldn't be opposed to learning it.

But first he needed to get Thrawn into his sleepwear. Or out of most of his uniform, Eli amended as his mind started speculating on Thrawn's nude form in entirely too much detail. He did _not_ need to know how Chiss genitals compared to human standard, for one.

"Let's get your boots and jacket off, sir," he said.

Thrawn shut his mouth and stared at him. "Please," he eventually said in Meese Caulf.

That derailed Eli's thoughts thoroughly. "...you speak Meese Caulf?"

"Yes?"

"Translator droids speak Meese Caulf," he hissed, old anger bubbling to the surface even if he'd long since made his peace with following Thrawn to every sort of hell.

Thrawn reached out to gently touch Eli's cheek. "A translator droid would not be here stripping me," he said with such softness it took Eli's brain a moment to catch up with what he'd just heard.

Stripping. Kriffing hell.

Eli swallowed. "Let's start with the boots," he said and knelt at Thrawn's feet.

They were well-maintained and shiny. Eli carefully drew down the zipper and lifted Thrawn's foot out of first one and then the other. He was wearing socks, but somehow touching the arches of his feet felt much too intimate regardless.

Closing up the zippers and putting the boots aside didn't give Eli nearly enough time to recover. He'd spent most of his waking moments by Thrawn's side for the past years and been just fine, he reminded himself, then turned back to face the man.

Thrawn had a considering expression on his face, softened by whatever chemical was having a party in his mind. "I know where to keep my enemies and I know where to keep my allies. But wherever should I keep you, Eli?"

"Sir?"

"Mm?"

"You're drunk," Eli said as he started to open Thrawn's uniform tunic.

Thrawn bared his neck with a happy sigh, giving Eli more room to operate. "Nonetheless."

The Sy Bisti word for allies was slightly broader than the Basic equivalent. Eli considered semantics as he finished opening Thrawn's tunic and shucked it from his shoulders. "I'm your aide, sir," he said, settling for a military-approved answer. "Your subordinate officer. I'm sure you will be able to find the optimal place for me and my skills once you've slept on it."

"You are so much more, Eli," Thrawn said as Eli hung up the tunic. "You are- Your mind is-"

Eli turned to find Thrawn trying to make a gesture in vain. "Thrawn?"

Thrawn sighed and slouched his shoulders. "You hold my words in your hands. You've held them well. Better than I have," he added in a confusing mix of Basic, Sy Bisti, and Meese Caulf.

Meaning that Thrawn was affected enough that the borders of languages were blurring together and keeping himself in Sy Bisti — out of his native tongue or Meese Caulf or some other trade language he might know — was too much of an effort. "I know Meese Caulf, too," Eli offered. "And Huttese and Bocce."

"Cheunh, Sy Bisti, Taarja, Minnisiat, Meese Caulf, Basic," Thrawn listed out.

Eli had heard of Taarja but never studied it. He made note to look into it and Minnisiat. Cheunh he'd never heard of and suspected never would, unless Thrawn saw fit to teach him. "Of those, I know Basic, Sy Bisti, and Meese Caulf," he said. "But sir, you should sleep."

"Stay?" Thrawn asked in thickly accented Basic.

It was completely legitimate for Eli to stay, he told himself. Someone should watch over Thrawn, and Eli was his aide, after all, and had the greatest amount of linguistic overlap. Besides, he'd been, if not ordered, then requested to stay.

"Of course, sir," he replied, adding the "sir" in a desperate reminder to himself that this years-long association was and would remain strictly professional.

Thrawn made a small pleased sound and struggled out of his trousers. Eli really should've helped him, but-

"Let me fold those for you, sir," he said in Basic that was probably too fast for Thrawn to follow in his present state. Thrawn didn't object to his trousers and uniform tunic being hung up in his closet.

Eli concentrated on the fabric and the hangers as if his life depended on it. He tried to get his mind firmly on the professional before he turned back around.

It was a challenge to keep it thus once he turned back to Thrawn: his CO was unfairly good-looking in his undershirt and underwear. A true example of the virtues of hitting the gym, Eli told himself. "Sir?"

Thrawn gestured the bed beside him and rubbed his eyes. Eli gently sat down next to him and wondered what would be appropriate to do. Shoulder massage? Tucking his CO in for the night would be a bridge too far, but-

"Are you having any ... uphuwa?" Thrawn asked.

"Symptoms," Eli automatically translated. "No, I didn't have enough alcohol to get drunk and..." he trailed off, watching Thrawn look faintly uncomprehending at the rapid-fire Basic, and continued in Sy Bisti, "No symptoms. No ill effects."

"Good." Thrawn's eyes fluttered closed. "I for you no harm want." He frowned. "I want not harm you for?"

"I understood," Eli replied in Sy Bisti; he would've used Meese Caulf, given that Thrawn was attempting to use Meese Caulf word order in his Sy Bisti, but suspected Thrawn couldn't handle the conjugations in his current state. "You should rest, sir."

Thrawn considered him with eyes halfway closed and shoulders stooped. "Yes." Then he pushed Eli down on the bed and curled up on him.

"Sir!" Eli objected and shook Thrawn's shoulder, but the man was to all appearances already asleep.

"Kriffing hell," Eli whispered under his breath. "Really, sir?"

Thrawn, of course, didn't answer. He had his face tucked in against Eli's shoulder so his every exhalation tickled Eli's neck, his arms were thrown around Eli like one of those giant octopodes of Lysatran legend, and he had a leg thrown over Eli in exactly the right angle to feel just how interested being pushed down had made him. Though he couldn't notice that, since he was asleep. Hopefully.

"You're one smug bastard, you know," Eli sighed as he started removing his boots using only his feet. The uniform tunic would have to stay on, but he could at least refrain from dirtying up his CO's bed with his shoes.

Eli did have some freedom of motion in his arms, though not enough to get Thrawn off of him. Well, perhaps he could've been able to squirm out from under Thrawn, but that might've hurt him, and giving one's CO bruises just wasn't done. And if he was truly honest with himself, he liked being used as a pillow.

The boots ended up unceremoniously dropped on the floor. He unsealed his tunic enough that he might actually catch some sleep, and with a final glance at Thrawn's slumbering form, ordered off the lights.

"Well, sir, it looks like you figured out exactly where you should keep me," Eli murmured. "As your karking pillow."

Thrawn, of course, didn't answer. With the uniform open, his nose brushed against Eli's throat.

"I guess I'll just tuck you in," Eli sighed. He'd long since learned to just go along with all of Thrawn's schemes, no matter how harebrained they might seem at first glance. He supposed being slept upon wasn't that different.

The blanket was standard military issue. Eli fished it out with his feet and then draped it over Thrawn, trying to keep it mostly off his own clothed form lest he melt.

"There," Eli said, aware he should feel ridiculous for monologuing at his unconscious CO but not really caring. Thrawn should feel more ridiculous for falling asleep on top of his aide, anyway. "You've now been tucked into bed, sir. I hope you find the outcome adequate." He skated his hand over Thrawn's shoulders and neck to ruffle his hair. If he was trapped here, he might as well have some fun.

With a deep exhalation, Thrawn started purring.

"Sir?"

No response. Of course.

Eli sighed. This would be a long, long night.


End file.
